Literary Translation in the Digital Era
Social Translating

About the Social Translating Project
Translated Books in 2018, 2019 and 2021
THE TRANSLATORS
Social Translating: The Blog

News

Photo (detail): © Hanser Verlag / © Cihan Cakmak

December 28, 2022
Realia, or how to get unfamiliar terms right in translation

Despite their expertise in their own language, translators are continually confronted with words, terms and concepts in the source language referring to realities that are unfamiliar or wholly unknown to the target language culture.

Photo (detail): © Niloufar Behin

December 28, 2022
Die persische Übersetzung des Romans „Herkunft“ auf der Bühne

Niloufar Behin has translated the novel Herkunft (English title: Where You Come From) into Farsi for the Social Translating Project. And last summer she got a chance to present her translation to a live audience at a bookshop in Tehran.

Ronja Ottmann ”The Summers (Die Sommer)“ Translation in Sinhalese

Photo (detail): © Kadulla Books / © Ashani Shalika Ranasinghe

November 22, 2022
Every text is unique

Ashani Shalika Ranasinghe is a Sri Lankan translator and lecturer in German studies. She’s also a veteran of the Goethe-Institut Korea’s Social Translating Project, having taken part in its first edition, and contributed some lively comments and questions to the discussion on the Lectory platform. Now she’s translating Ronya Othmann’s Die Sommer (The Summer) into Sinhalese. We spoke to her about the specific challenges involved in translating and how much extra work goes into producing a good translation.

About the Social Translating Project

The Social Translating Project is testing a new social practice for literary translation.
Translators from Asia are translating a German-language novel into their respective native languages. During the process, they meet in a closed digital forum and work on their translations by interacting with one another and engaging in a close discourse with the author. An e-book platform with social functions has been used which allows the users to make marginal notes in the text of an e-book as well for the translators and the author to follow up on each other’s comments.

Additional translators outside Asia are being invited to participate in the Social Translating discourse through partnerships with German publishers who provide books for the Social Translating Projects.

The Merck Social Translating Project 2018 was developed by the Goethe-Institut Korea in partnership with Merck Korea.

Translated Books in 2018, 2019 and 2021

Photo (detail): © Hanser Verlag / © Cihan Cakmak

About the author and the book
Ronya Othmann: “The Summers”

More about the author and his book “Die Sommer” (The Summers), which is currently translated as part of Social Translating Project 2021.

About the author and the book
Judith Hermann: “Home”

More about the author and his book “Daheim” (Home), which is currently translated as part of Social Translating Project 2021.

Photo: Katja Sämann, Random House Verlag

About the author and the book
Saša Stanišić: “Origin”

More about the author and his book “Herkunft” (Origin), which is currently translated into four languages as part of Social Translating Project 2019.

Winner of the 2019 German Book Prize

Photo: Jürgen Bauer, Suhrkamp Verlag

About the author and the book
Judith Schalansky: “An Inventory of Certain Losses”

More about the author and her book “Verzeichnis einiger Verluste” (An Inventory of Certain Losses), which is currently translated into six languages as part of the Social Translating Project 2019.

Photo: Dagmar Morath; Rowohlt-Verlag

About the author and the book
Thomas Melle: “The World at Your Back”

More about the author and his book “Die Welt im Rücken” (The World at Your Back), which was translated into ten languages as part of the project in 2018.

THE TRANSLATORS

Photo: Prodpran Arunyig

Translators of “Origin”

Photo: Goethe-Institut Korea/OZAK

Translators of “An Inventory of Certain Losses”

Photo: Goethe-Institut Korea/OZAK

Translators of “The World at your Back”

Social Translating: The Blog

The Social Translating Blog

Every day the translators meet in the digital forum on the Internet platform to go over their questions about specific parts of the text, share their impressions, and discuss cultural differences. The blog captures the voices of those involved and sheds light on what the digital forum is all about. The blog posts are available in German, English and Korean.